Handsome B. Wonderful:Unobtanium: In other words, they still don't get it. I have a touch-enabled laptop, and I do not use the touchscreen.

Lolwut? Why did you buy it then?

Because it had all the other features I wanted at the price (it's an Asus X202). At the time I was looking for an i3 or i5, 13.3 or smaller, at least one USB 3.0 port, slim and light so I can carry it for personal stuff along with my work laptop (a 15.6 Lenovo), under $500.00. It came with the touchscreen, but I didn't have to have that feature.

I had several computers that I was looking at, but decided on this one because it went on sale when I as ready to buy. I just looked - I paid less for it than most of the on-line offers for new ones available today.

vegas_greaser:BumpInTheNight: ikanreed: cman: Now if we could destroy Unity next...

There are like one trillion tech products with that name. I assume you mean the Linux one? Not the game engine, or development tool, right?

I'm guessing so, Unity the game engine is pretty spiffy. Unity the Metro of Linux UIs is certainly not, in fact among my circle of co-workers and friends its the single driving force that's making us migrate away from Ubuntu since they seem to have locked their jaws onto that and several other unwanted features..Ugh. While I'm not an Ubuntu user (been using Fedora/RedHat since 1998 or so), Gnome 3 is just as bad as Unity, I end up alternating between Mate, Cinnamon, Enlightenment, and Fluxbox.

I'm not a codemonkey, but when Windows 8.1 shat the bed on my computer, leaving me unable to even do a factory reset (I suspect malware was involved--my bad, I know) or download the iso (because the windows product key is etched on my motherboard--thanks, Sony), I said "screw it" and installed Linux.

I made a Linux Live key and tried out Ubuntu first, then Mint. I'm glad I made the decision--even when something goes wrong, I'm learning a lot about how operating systems work, and am able (with the assistance of the innumerable online resources) to eventually figure out how to fix it. (I'm not a coder, but I'm not an idiot either.)

So I guess I have Microsoft to thank for me making the transition to open-source software. Thanks, Microsoft!

BumpInTheNight:Telos: In other words "it's different so it's bad, I want the exact same thing as before. Change is bad." Sorry, but the old start menu sucked horribly. The new start menu (aka Metro Desktop) is much better in that you don't have to sort through tiny folders to find what you want, and even if you don't see it you can type to search.

Yah because having all 18 of Office's stupid little obscure apps along with every other executable in one gigantic unsorted tile set resembling an detonated skittle bag is so great. The superior Start Menu from 7 had a self learning 'commonly used' section front and center and then an organized tree to hold all those bullshiat apps you use once a century, and it also featured a search by typing right there as well. Sure Metro would be okay for people who barely scratch the capabilities of a computer, but anyone doing any real amount of work on a system has enough apps installed that the flat sprawl gets hideous.

One thing they still don't have right is the ability to "window" non-desktop apps. Once again, Stardock MetroMix long ago fixed the mistakes that MSFT made in Metro/Modern/Windows Store/Fisher-Price UI. "The Windows that can't window." I have a 28" primary monitor. I don't want one goddamn application hogging the entire screen.

Orgasmatron138:Far Cough: Fark is an awfully strange place. 136 posts about the biggest movie opening of the year to date (Lego) but 234 posts in this latest edition of "Win8 Blows, Does Not, Does Too".

First off, the year to date is what, five weeks old? Second, we're not all children.

Geez, guys, take it easy. It was just a random observation. It's funny that in that thread I'm the one pilloried for not enjoying the movie enough.

nekom:My long standing "every other version" policy has never failed me. XP was great. 7 is fantastic! 8 can go to hell. Can't wait for the next one.

Well, of course every other version is garbage. Why would they release two good versions in a row? If they release a crappy version every other version, people will still buy it either from new computers or from being in a situation where they need 'the latest system for compatibility.' I like to say "Every even version is the extended beta for every odd version." Windows 95 was just one long beta test for Windows 98. Windows Vista was one long beta test for Windows 7. Windows 8 is just one long beta test for windows 9.

syrynxx:One thing they still don't have right is the ability to "window" non-desktop apps. Once again, Stardock MetroMix long ago fixed the mistakes that MSFT made in Metro/Modern/Windows Store/Fisher-Price UI. "The Windows that can't window." I have a 28" primary monitor. I don't want one goddamn application hogging the entire screen.

I'm not really sure why you'd want to window the apps. They pretty much all suck for non-tablet environments and I feel like I'd much rather be using the desktop versions of them.

Looks like it's going to be a short beta test. They're rushing out windows 9 in early 2015 to hopefully dissipate the stink windows 8 is leaving. I'm hoping this won't mean windows 9 ends up suffering because of this.

For YEARS Windows XP was complete and absolute crap and people weren't going to move away from Windows 2000 (which you left out). Until SP2, and even a bit in SP3, XP was one of the worst offenders for crashes and bluescreens on the planet. It seemed like if you did anything to the video card drivers, you'd bluescreen that operating system. I remember the pain of having to deal with Bluetooth drivers and having to use 3rd party controls to get devices to work properly. And god help you if you wanted to search & index the operating system and a large external media drive. In XP, it's like working with a snail.

It seems like people love to look at that Fisher Price operating system with rose colored glasses.

Man, you really play up the Microsoft Party Line, don't you?

XP was great because it was a refined Windows 2000, just as Windows 7 is great because it was a refined Windows Vista. By the time XP rolled out, all the driver issues that plagued Win2k (mostly because of holdovers to the Win9x ecosystem) got ironed out and became standard. Games were far more playable on XP (and that is your killer computer application, after all)

Likewise, Vista implemented a TON of security stuff and signed drivers, both were things nobody was really prepared for. Developers were mostly too lazy to actually code the security bits into their apps before Vista came out, because the APIs allowed them to get away with it. When those holes got tightened up, it broke a lot of apps. Likewise, signed drivers made XP a necessity for many people and businesses because the original vendors were no longer supporting hardware - which some companies planned on using for a decade or more - and thus, never released drivers for. It took a while for older (but still supported) hardware to get signed drivers, which made Vista unusable for many people.

With the Vista misstep, XP had plenty of time to become finely tuned and well understood by users and IT departments. Setting Group Policies is always tricky, but benefgitted from the extra time tweaking XP to balance security and utility. Supporting your existing capital investments (hardware and applications) also meant that the status quo, as long as performance and productivity were not an issue, was the Golden Rule. For 95% of corporate America, a 6~7 year old Windows XP machine with 2~3GB of RAM can do everything its users need to do,

Of course, Microsoft doesn't have a vested interest in selling an OS 12 years ago and continuing to support it, so it has to push newer versions and give compelling reasons for users and corporations to buy it. HArdware vendors have no vested interest in supporting hardware they sold 6 or 7 years ago, so they have to push new hardware and give compelling reasons for their purchase (some, like Epson, get downright dirty and timebomb their products)

It is unfortunate that Microsoft doubled down with Win8. They confused "compelling" with "imposing their will" in trying to leverage their desktop beast as a means of forcing their mobile UI intot he worldwide acceptance.

Please stop arguing that Windows 8 (and we are talking about the Metro UI here) is great, too... if it was, in any measure, than Ballmer would still be in charge, and the team responsible for Windows 8 would still be around. It was a mistake, plain and simple, and a decade or two from now, after the fallout has finally settled, it will be chronicled by those involved as a big mistake.

Far Cough:vegas_greaser: BumpInTheNight: ikanreed: cman: Now if we could destroy Unity next...

There are like one trillion tech products with that name. I assume you mean the Linux one? Not the game engine, or development tool, right?

I'm guessing so, Unity the game engine is pretty spiffy. Unity the Metro of Linux UIs is certainly not, in fact among my circle of co-workers and friends its the single driving force that's making us migrate away from Ubuntu since they seem to have locked their jaws onto that and several other unwanted features..Ugh. While I'm not an Ubuntu user (been using Fedora/RedHat since 1998 or so), Gnome 3 is just as bad as Unity, I end up alternating between Mate, Cinnamon, Enlightenment, and Fluxbox.

I thought at least one of you was serious, because of course the DEC Alphas ran both VMS and MS Windows.

LOL Honestly I do *like* KDE, but I've never really used it for long periods of time. I did set up my nephew and wife's PC's with KDE4 and they have no issues with it. I don't know, just never really could get used to it as my main desktop.

Phil Moskowitz:demaL-demaL-yeH: With the genius at Microsoft who crammed that ribbon in Office down people's throats admitting that the new Windows interface costs days to weeks of productivity, that might not be a safe bet.

When I saw ribbon come out I knew this period of horrible design was coming. Ribbon is "neat looking" but functionally garbage. That outlook took over the entire company. Microsoft is now kinda neat looking useless (and sometimes freshly crippled) garbage.

I was especially impressed when they farked up cleartype in the new Office.

As someone who sees a lot of this every day:The Ribbon is actually much easier to use than the big menu trees of Office prior to 2007. I can find things a lot faster and easier. I think the ribbon debate just comes down to if someone is more visually oriented. Being a very visual person I find it a godsend because it is so much easier to find things now in Office.

Windows 8, on the other hand, is incredibly annoying. Mainly because I hate how UI elements jump up at you when you come close to a hot corner, which causes me to do things like accidentally switch to a metro app when I'm trying to pull up a file menu.

Ghastly:Securitywyrm: Windows 8 is just one long beta test for windows 9.

Looks like it's going to be a short beta test. They're rushing out windows 9 in early 2015 to hopefully dissipate the stink windows 8 is leaving. I'm hoping this won't mean windows 9 ends up suffering because of this.

Why do people still say this? Windows Vista came out in 2006 while Windows 7 came out in 2009 while Windows 8 came out in 2012. That's three years, the same amount of time Windows 8 will be on the market before the introduction of 9

TNel:Kahabut: THIS. I'm an IT professional, this has been a solid policy since win98

Well then you got stuck with shiatty XP for a few years. IT pros know not to upgrade until atleast SP1. I love how many people forgot about what kind of dogshiat vanilla XP was.

I didn't get stuck with shiat. We didn't put XP on a single machine in the office until sp1 was well out and several other fixes as well. We ran 2000 for a long time as a result.

But then, I get to dictate policy, so we don't touch anything until I've tested the hell out of it. Windows 8 fails on the interface alone. It doesn't even matter if it's "better", because it's a pile of re-training just waiting to happen, and no organization can afford that.

LesserEvil:By the time XP rolled out, all the driver issues that plagued Win2k got ironed out.

I take it you never played much with XP 64bit? That version never got upgraded past SP2 and driver support *is* still a nightmare on that version. Everyone who is raving about XP SP3 are running workstations that are still 32 bit. *shudder*

I think I recycled my last 32-bit hardware a decade ago, when the "Prescott" Pentium 4's rolled out.

Mad_Radhu:Phil Moskowitz: demaL-demaL-yeH: With the genius at Microsoft who crammed that ribbon in Office down people's throats admitting that the new Windows interface costs days to weeks of productivity, that might not be a safe bet.

When I saw ribbon come out I knew this period of horrible design was coming. Ribbon is "neat looking" but functionally garbage. That outlook took over the entire company. Microsoft is now kinda neat looking useless (and sometimes freshly crippled) garbage.

I was especially impressed when they farked up cleartype in the new Office.

As someone who sees a lot of this every day:[www.photoinduced.com image 139x700]The Ribbon is actually much easier to use than the big menu trees of Office prior to 2007. I can find things a lot faster and easier. I think the ribbon debate just comes down to if someone is more visually oriented. Being a very visual person I find it a godsend because it is so much easier to find things now in Office.

Windows 8, on the other hand, is incredibly annoying. Mainly because I hate how UI elements jump up at you when you come close to a hot corner, which causes me to do things like accidentally switch to a metro app when I'm trying to pull up a file menu.

It's your operating system. It will find some way to annoy you eventually.

Why the Windows 8 haters want to have an outdated UI option that nobody should be using anymore anyway is a mystery to me.

The start menu uses less than 30% of the screen for a task that is pretty much always a quick uni-tasking activity. You click the menu find what you want in tightly fitted text and small icons open it and the start menudisappears.

Metro is a full screen start menu that displays live data and larger icons that are easily found and clicked on quickly.

Then again who bothers witheither? Just hit the windows key and type the first three letters of the name of what you want.

That's the problem, it fills the while screen with something that can be done in a small window. I usually have a pile of stuff open at once, laid out on a large monitor. Often I'm watching a video or some other real time thing and a full page start screen comes up over that.

I get it, there are some people who want the latest and greatest no matter what and cannot fathom or even are offended that someone else may use their computer differently or have different preferences. That doesn't change the fact that I hate windows 8 and a good half of the market does too, I'm not an anomaly and yes I have used it.

Here's the thing, I'm the customer, the customer is always right. Offer the product that I want and I will buy it. Don't offer the product that you want and then get butthurt when I say that it sucks.

MrSteve007:LesserEvil: By the time XP rolled out, all the driver issues that plagued Win2k got ironed out.

I take it you never played much with XP 64bit? That version never got upgraded past SP2 and driver support *is* still a nightmare on that version. Everyone who is raving about XP SP3 are running workstations that are still 32 bit. *shudder*

I think I recycled my last 32-bit hardware a decade ago, when the "Prescott" Pentium 4's rolled out.

Can you make anything remotely resembling an argument for why 64 bit workstations are an improvement? In what use case?

I take it you don't work in an entrenched industry, because if you did you'd understand that a great deal of software was not written for 64 bit, nor would it benefit from the costly upgrade to make it work in 64 bit, nor is there a cost effective alternative.

The VAST majority of the installed based of workstations have, as their maximum load, MS office, publisher, and an email client running.

MrSteve007:LesserEvil: By the time XP rolled out, all the driver issues that plagued Win2k got ironed out.

I take it you never played much with XP 64bit? That version never got upgraded past SP2 and driver support *is* still a nightmare on that version. Everyone who is raving about XP SP3 are running workstations that are still 32 bit. *shudder*

I think I recycled my last 32-bit hardware a decade ago, when the "Prescott" Pentium 4's rolled out.

Oh, 64-bit XP is a nightmare, no doubt. I do not include that in any serious consideration of Windows XP, which was very much (for consumers, at least) a fine 32-bit OS for the hardware of the time.

I'm just saying that XP was the first "consumer" grade "big boy" Windows OS. You could play games and it was well supported by hardware vendors. Even considerign the state before service packs, XP was a decent operating system. It's only real flaw was the activation nonsense that continues today. Apparently "we got over it"

I'm not saying I prefer XP over Win7, though. My point was that it became well understood by the people that had to understand their systems to administrate them. Ever have to set up Group Policies for an intranet with 400,000 users? I've seen minor changes break machines to being almost unusable (Vista machines that had to be dealt with physically to fix). Familiarity became its strong suit. Most Corporate IT departments have been happily phasing in Windows 7 for the last few years, now that they understand the tighter security and need the 64-bit OS to install on systems equipped with 4GB of RAM or more.

I am also not saying that there weren't underlying performance improvements to Win8.x - just that the UI mess is a fiasco and should have been handled differently. In fact, there were people inside of Microsoft who URGED it be handled differently, but were ignored and pushed out. The Metro UI might be great for a number of users, but they aren't in the majority... nor is the majority opinion that the Start Menu was bad.

Assuming a majority of your customers are wrong is a terrible way to do business.

LineNoise:The problem with 8 (and even 8.1) is that people continued to use it like they did the previous versions. Instead of taking advantage of the new features, they tried to shoehorn in their method of doing things like they did in previous versions.

That isn't to say it doesn't have its faults, there are a handful of things that bug me a little in 8, but overall the hate is just people making noise. It works well, and if you use the interface as intended (yes, even without touch), you can see what they were going for and why it works.

But don't you see the problem there? A PC is a versatile tool that people use to get stuff done. The tool should be flexible enough to adapt to my workin style, not the other way around. It's fine to have a new interface available but it's a mistake to try to force everyone to adapt. There are millions of users who don't really *like* computers, they're not enthusiasts, they just need to get stuff done. Change can be good, but change for the sake of change is not good.